


Law lain, truth slain, scourge mourns, light is gifted it's thief

by Biblioholic93



Category: Homestuck
Genre: #excessive useless tags, And its diamonds, Depression, F/F, Hangman's knot, Kanaya fights dirty and very noncanon, Lost in the ductwork, More spoilery, My chart can't even the solemn scourge, Old title was Terezi Saves Vriska only longer, Other, Pale scourgecest is a good law to lay, Posh i can find more tags, Suicide Threats, Tw: suicide scare, Vriska fever, just something I dreamed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-20
Updated: 2016-07-20
Packaged: 2018-07-25 15:16:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7537792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Biblioholic93/pseuds/Biblioholic93
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kanaya saves Terezi from moping for a lot longer. Then for some reason it becomes briefly about when Game Over Scourge Sisters Reunite and what they happen to do as the sun fades. Hint it's completely self indulgent. I guess the warning's for game over ghost Terezi who technically passes on in narrative to the Green Sun Event Horizon. At like the last word. I guess, boils down to, it's not Real Terezi but she's Real Enough.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Law lain, truth slain, scourge mourns, light is gifted it's thief

**Author's Note:**

> If you're not looking for a sad thing that ends WELL but doesn't exactly resolve much of what it brings up... leave. Know that I'm a little sorry and I should be because nobody would go publish this I know that very well. It's just, oh you know. Needed my own closure. I feel like this all closes something. It was a deliberately withheld aspect of Homestuck. Teased with jailbreak stump references. I guess suicide was just this Meta Topic. So now it's a Little Topic.

A dark room. Kanaya was dark today, slipping through it, ignoring it, trodding feet silent in her well chosen slippers. Through the dark she slouched and trod like a monster, a look of disgust and urgency on her face. The silence was without break, safe for the occasional very subtle, very frightening sound of Kanaya testing the air for scents. Just little sniffs, but they were vast honks to those who took silence in their hearts and their bodies too. The fear was what she was following, actually. She smells it, and knows how old to a nanosecond it is, which direction it wafted as he had paused to listen and sweat here, here, here too. She held her lipstick lightly at her side. It was still caked in flaking purple, and her lips unadorned as could be. 

Pause, it is the middle of a hallway and that vent just sniffled at her. Not remotely clownlike.

And again. It was... Terezi. Kanaya didn't even wonder how she was supposed to be quiet in a ventilation shaft, climbing, then the second one, descending. She just was. The path to this isolated room was circuitous, and Kanaya barely breathed simply followed a pattern imbedded in her mind. It was sort of like a remembered clock. She could hear harpsichords in the turns, a reptilian directness in the plucky long distances gone straight... it really was a tricky place... the sniffles have stopped and Kanaya doesn't even notice.

Then something horrible that collectively and in summation clenches Kanaya's hand over her chest, face stabbed across with pain and disbelief, not that anyone cared about the latter. Not that reality cared. It should. Why didn't it? What is heard, is soft growling, then thuds. Much like fists to stone. Kanaya knows the sound. "I can't," the poor teal breathes out hard, wheezing it, "I can't, I _can't_ , no I have to, I CAN'T, I CAN'T, I _MUST_ and I can't, she's _waiting for me out there_ , I CAN'T, I WON'T, I haaave to," this last degenerates pitifully into a keening cry. "I can't, I just can't, nothing, nothing, DAMN FUCKING VOID," crunch, wumph, wumph. Her hand! Her other hand didn't care! This was bad! Terezi was in a bad place. Why was she hiding?????

Kanaya is lost in the vents, feeling claustrophobic, scampering at rodent speed, and feeling such in desperation. She knows what she's to find. Well, mostly.

What clenches her hand truly, makes Kanaya stop so suddenly curl up and breath in with true self-awakened fear: a scream. "VRISKA! VRISKA YOU FOOL YOU NEEDED ME, WHY DID YOU TURN AWAY? I NEEDED YOU! YOU, I, THIS IS POINTLESS, YOU'RE **NOT HERE** ," and then, a whisper, she was close, "it's all pointless."

Kanaya was painting ten pictures and wishing it were that. This was guilt after killing Gamzee too... oh she prayed... Kanaya knew, Terezi had been _listening_ to the clown. This was not to happen... how could it come to this? Kanaya dragged herself weakly out of the vent to darkness, then put her lipstick away with a numb sort of motion and... alit. Her eyes started at the bottom. She didn't want to look up. She knew it would be... dangling... all too low.

Terezi pacing, dripping from wounds on her head, by the many drips it was of course evident to the practiced eyes watching. Those feet, still pacing? She didn't even smell Kanaya's coppery fear. Blood on the pallet one supposed. Her bare feet were a teal-frosted gray. Poor circulation. Cold to the stone. For some reason Kanaya suddenly wants to take off her shoes in match. She doesn't. Forces herself to focus. Oh god she could hear it sway... it was hanging from a ceiling grate, which creaked, and... Terezi paused very briefly and grunted, a maddening toy squeak careening off two walls while Terezi turns and stops. The cane nervously held in a fist clatters as it falls. "Kanaya," she says, surprised, distant.

Kanaya hadn't raised her eyes, and Terezi knew it. The Teal mutely raised her hurt hand and stopped to... Kanaya suddenly gasped. Scratches across the sides and her cheeks beneath, but...

... eyes. Kanaya must have had a face. "Stop that," Terezi hissed. "I won't, obviously." She dropped her head and scratched her hair at the nape of her neck, closing her eyes in fright. "I'm just..." she suddenly went dull at all aspects, all her tense body language and her sharply angry eyes, all going dull, emotionless. "I was pale for her when I killed her," she states, then pulls Her Own plush out of the noose. Tossed it into the corner with some torn up boondollars, melted together boonbucks. The time, spent.

Kanaya beholds the scene for a long time in silence.

Then finally, a jerking thown motion. A wail of mechanical chain and motor. A clatter like hell. Nobody hears the rope fall. Terezi gasps covers her mouth steps forward into the middle of the room over the rope puddle. "Stop tying those knots," Kanaya strainedly urges. "It's not good for you anymore."

Terezi opens her eyes as she falls somewhere in them and looks so lost, so unsure. Her mind was like a fluttering moth, against the Jade's forehead. Trying to see possibilities.

There was one possibility. Forming to the moment. Terezi couldn't see it because it was very, very certain.

Kanaya takes a step forward. Her eyes are intent on Terezi's hand. Her own hand is reaching.

Terezi steps back, shying and lifting her hurt hand to her belly like a hurt dog. "Y-you shouldn't touch me right now," she chokes out weakly. "I don't know what I'll-"

Kanaya gripped Terezi's wrist firmly, turned it, very gently wiped the fingers open. The sylph's light flickered. Her hands disengage and lower. The taller girl looms over the orphan. The hurts on her hand and her face have vanished.

Terezi backed one more step against the wall and outright cowered, moaning "Oh goddesses, Kanaya, oh goddess and goddessess." She covered her face. "It only hurts. I didn't look with my own eyes. I could have... I could have kissed her!!! Tackled her!!! ANYTHIIIIIIIING!!!!" Her chin went far upwards and she twitched as if helpless to the thoughts rushing through her.

Aggressive hands suddenly. Kanaya's hands are aggressive and her mind feels like it's full of scraping chalkboards and maybe some dogs being tortured by knife too. She'd always killed and killed and killed when the undead did that to mock her compassion. Now she can only grasp the cowering girl's shoulders and pull her close and hold her close. "I can't do this without you," she breathes.

"I cuh-cuh-can't see the way, through," Terezi struggled desperately, tears streaming down her face. "I just want her back."

"You stabbed her there but you wouldn't have stopped her those other ways," Kanaya said, though it felt like she had to root around and dig the words out like an imbedded bullet. Had to get weird.

"I stabbed her in the heart," Terezi said quickly, angry sounding.

"You were afraid," Kanaya said. "You were afraid what she was going to do to you if you did something she'd decide was wrong. She was so capable of stabbing you that day. I hadn't hardly spoken meaningfully to her for days but I knew. I knew it was my fault."

"She was so like _marble_ everywhere she turned to my nose," Terezi said as her voice trembled terribly. "I wanted to push her down and bite the wings. She was so beautiful and it hurt me so much to, to...."

"Don't say it," Kanaya invited dully. "See if it hurts less."

Terezi went limp, shaking everywhere.

Kanaya held her tight and petted her lower back softly. "Shh. Shh. It's okay."

"Nothing's okay," Terezi whimpered. "I killed her."

"You did and I'm proud of you Terezi. I loved her too. I loved her too. I could not. It was only you between us nd doom."

It was over. The danger passed, the sobs unfolding against Kanaya's chest. "You shouldn't be," she bawled. "It didn't have to b-beee this waaaay...."

"It did because we're here still."

"I'll see her later won't I?"

"You have to wait. Very patiently. The horrortellers will own your soul if you slip away from us. From me. Dave won't ever understand, Terezi. Dave will _follow._ I don't know if I could save Rose... but I'd follow her if. If I. You just cannot, dear. You have to wait."

"Wait...."

So she did. She also walked.  
*****

Terezi's hand to Vriska's, white eyes gawping at gawping white eyes.

Vriska said "I would have followed you if the sword was turned the other way."

So it was, being doomed. Lots of feeling better in the end. Terezi wouldn't trade it, any of it, there at the end.

What she said was "I died then too. Just bled slower."

"Oh no, Terezi...!" A warm hug, and she hardly knew when they sat down and she started shivering. Didn't know which came first. Didn't know why she wasn't dying from this tearing sensation.

Then, suddenly. A laugh once stolen finds its way to her lips. "You're real! I've dreamed for so long, and, it's really you!"

Vriska just sobbed into her breast. The reason unscruitable. Terezi cried too, laughing softly, but it was all leaking out. All the weight. All the hardness. All the things she had just been living with.

"We're here," Terezi says, holding tight to Vriska and looking up. "We get to save you."

Running with hands linked. Smoke. They ran through a crack, where things formed and shattered and Terezi's power flared around them, protecting with everything what Vriska had brought in her magical heart.

Light was moving behind them. They were moving through and passed the light. Dust. They were dust and they swept the living Vriska off and hurled through the cracks into the center. The event horizon.

Awaiting there, a giant yet shrinking door. Words scratched in red Medigo blood: One may live.

Terezi pushed them both through before they could squalk. They twisted together screaming. Alive, because they had to be.

Oblivion was no sweeter than victory to Terezi. The end was a blink, and she remembered, last, a smile felt on her face.


End file.
